An Episode of Weight-Loss Infidelity

Happy New Year! — as belated as this is.

The good news is, if I stay on top of things from here on out, I’ll still be able to make 164 by August 1, my original goal date. The bad news is, I won’t hit 196 by my birthday, and probably not by Feb. 11 … just not enough time left.

Yeah, I put on weight for Christmas.

I stopped tracking my intake. And I found it hard to start again. I lost some of it after Christmas morning, only to put it back on for the new year. Since New Year’s Eve, I’ve been hovering between 215 and 216.4. Three weeks ago, I was 13.8 pounds ahead of my original plan. As of Monday, I was only two pounds ahead. As of this morning, I’m 12.8 pounds over the monthly goal line.

Yesterday was the last straw: For reasons I can’t quite remember, I made a ham and cheese omelet sandwich. Seven hundred and ten calories, which I didn’t think about until I got around to logging my intake. When I finally crunched the numbers and saw the result, I said, “Okay, that’s enough! Get back to your program, Layne!” Sometimes, you just have to get mad at yourself to get over yourself.

Week 41 Progress Report: Giving Thanks On Thanksgiving

© 2019 Bitmoji.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for three weeks. I recently went back to work as a health insurance agent, so getting my business off the ground has eaten more and more of my available time. During that period, I got seriously off-track for my 90-Day Challenge Goal; I may fall short by a pound or two. First, the week-ending numbers:

Starting Weight:	216.0
Original Target*:	228.8
Adjusted Target:	213.7
Actual Weight:	214.6
Loss/Gain:	– 1.4
Total Loss:	88.0
% of Goal:	63.5%
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 2.1
*Original target calculated from a starting weight of 302.6 lbs. and an average loss/wk. of 1.8 lbs.

Next, the month-ending numbers for November 11:

Starting Weight:	224.8
Target Weight:	215.3
Actual Weight:	217.6
Loss/Gain:	– 7.2
Avg. Loss/Wk.:	– 1.6

Now, as of this morning, I weigh 212.4. That’s about 1.5 lbs. over the 90-Day Challenge target line, which (all things considered) isn’t bad. The fact remains that the general trend is still downward. Even if I miss the 90-Day Challenge goal, I can still make the goal of being at or under 196 by my 56th birthday.

I’m grateful.

Closet-Diving and Memories

Tonight, I went closet-diving. “Closet-diving” is when you go through your clothes to check the fit of older items you put away for “when I lose a few pounds.” A female acquaintance described it as something women do, but I wouldn’t be surprised if other men besides me kept some skinnier clothes from bygone days.

It started this morning when I put on my white guayabera shirt, one piece of a huge selection of clothes that a former coworker had given me after her husband lost a lot of weight and, ignorant of this fact, I had complained to her about the bareness of my wardrobe. (It was an incredibly generous gift; the total donation was easily worth $1,000 even in 2007.) A 3XL, I noticed with some amusement that the guayabera is now beginning to fit like a muumuu. Nevertheless, I wore it all day because guayaberas and tropical prints are good shirts to wear on a north-central Texas summer day, especially on “casual Friday.”

About an hour ago, after my brother had come home from dinner with his not-quite-ex-wife (I’ll leave you to wonder about that because I wonder, too), I mentioned the capacious Cuban shirt to him. “I’ll have to check out Goodwill,” I told him, “because this is the best of my tropical shirts. The rest are looking pretty ratty.”

“Hold on a moment,” Ted replied. He dived into his walk-in closet and found an ivory guayabera and a light-blue tropical print that hadn’t been taken out of the cleaner bags for some time. The tropical print was 2XL; it fits loose but good and is attractive as well.

The guayabera is a large. Not extra-large … merely large. And it fits. Not even a slight bit of strain at the button over my belly. That’s what prompted the closet-dive.